The Creativity Project: An Awesometastic Story Collection

by Colby Sharp (Editor)

Overview

Book advocate Colby Sharp presents more than forty beloved, award-winning, diverse and bestselling authors and illustrators in a creative challenge!

Colby Sharp invited more than forty authors and illustrators to provide story starters for each other; photos, drawings, poems, prose, or anything they could dream up. When they received their prompts, they responded by transforming these seeds into any form of creative work they wanted to share.

The result is a stunning collection of words, art, poetry, and stories by some of our most celebrated children book creators. A section of extra story starters by every contributor provides fresh inspiration for readers to create works of their own. Here is an innovative book that offers something for every kind of reader and creator!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316507790
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	09/03/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	486,191
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	710L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Colby Sharp is a co-founder of the online community Nerdy Book Club and its off-shoot conference, Nerd Camp, two popular monthly Twitter chats, #Titletalk, #SharpSchu, and The Yarn, a podcast about bookmaking and the creative process.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Creativity Project:
An Amazon Best Book of the Year So Far

* "Anyone reading this book will discover the joy and wonder in each and every prompt and response."—School Library Connection, starred review

"Packed with ideas and inspiration, this volume provides fodder for the imagination...."—School Library Journal

"There's plenty here to ignite kids' imaginations and provide both laughs and food for thought."—Booklist

"This is a must-have resource for creative writing classes and clubs, or for anyone seeking to launch or hone their own imaginative capabilities."—BCCB

"An end section includes 44 additional prompts from the participants for readers, which further emphasizes the collection's celebration of 'the way ideas can be story seeds that take root and blossom.'"—Publishers Weekly

"Demonstrating the anarchic nature of creativity might be the most powerful message of this inviting project."—Horn Book

From the Publisher

03/26/2018
This anthology features 44 pieces of writing and art from children’s book authors and illustrators. The works are broad-ranging in terms of content, medium, and theme, yet they are all the result of an experiment spearheaded by Sharp, an educator and cofounder of the Nerdy Book Club. Participants were asked to submit creative prompts, which he dispersed among them; each individual was then tasked with creating an original piece inspired by a prompt. For each selection, the writer or artist includes the lines of prose or artwork that they received and from whom, followed by their response. Sophie Blackall’s prompt for Adam Gidwitz is a drawing of a woman holding an enormous fish; Gidwitz replies with a deadpan story about a girl whose mother’s new boyfriend is a fish. Laurel Snyder invites Lisa Brown to take an abstract idea (like “joy” or “hunger”) and imagine it as a character. Brown creates a comic that personifies “quiet” as a superhero-like figure who loves to read, listen, and take notice. An end section includes 44 additional prompts from the participants for readers, which further emphasizes the collection’s celebration of “the way ideas can be story seeds that take root and blossom.” Ages 8–12. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

02/01/2018
Gr 4–6—This collection is the result of a scheme facilitated by teacher and children's book advocate Sharp. He recruited 44 children's book creators—from Sherman Alexie to Javaka Steptoe to Victoria Jamieson—to compose and respond to one another's story prompts. Featuring work from a wide array of contributors, this volume includes stories, poetry, illustrations, and comics dealing with an incredible variety of subject matter, from Laurie Keller's humorous cartoon about anthropomorphic hats to Andrea Davis Pinkney's moving poem about Jackie Robinson. The authors and illustrators have been selected with care, coming from many different cultural backgrounds and representing an assortment of genres and creative styles. Although the variety of responses to the prompts causes the collection to feel at times a bit uneven, the mixed bag approach allows readers to have a peek into the creative processes of some of their favorite book creators and to understand that young people, too, have the power to tell a story. The second portion of the book invites readers to do just that. Each of the creators has provided an additional unanswered prompt for readers to explore their creativity and storytelling abilities. Back matter includes brief biographies of the contributors. VERDICT Packed with ideas and inspiration, this volume provides fodder for the imagination of those participating in storytelling projects, whether on their own or in a classroom or library program.—Sarah Reid, Four County Library System, NY

School Library Journal

2017-11-29
A guide that encourages young writers to experiment and create.Well-known writers and illustrators here collaborate on a volume of writing prompts and the stories that result. Sharp invited contributors to submit creative prompts ("poems, photographs, drawings, anything"), and then each contributor used another's prompt to create something—a story, a poem, a comic, an illustration. The experiment in "the way ideas can be story seeds that take root and blossom" must have been fun for the creators, but the fruits of their play have not yielded a collection that's particularly useful to young writers. Many of the prompts are silly or vague, and the resulting stories, poems, and illustrations are, for the most part, lacking in substance. Kate DiCamillo leads off with a solid idea—using overheard dialogue for a short story told in dialogue. But Lemony Snicket's response feels dashed off, a flip story likely to fall flat with readers. John Schu's prompt, "My school librarian turned into a fly on the fifth day of fourth grade," might sound Kafka-esque, but Sherman Alexie's resultant poem feels like so much free association rather than a constructed work. A proliferation of exclamation points seemingly intended to boost enthusiasm may further act as a turnoff. An earnest attempt, but readers will find both better guides to creative writing and better short stories, poems, etc., elsewhere. (contributor biographies, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews